Street performers and the law

Busking it

Do you have a licence to swallow that sword?

SPACE COWBOY, a sword-swallower, was once arrested in New York for brandishing weapons in public. After being locked up for 22 hours, Mr Cowboy (whose real name is Chayne Hultgren) posted on his fan page that busking in New York “sux bigtime”. He now performs on less draconian streets.

Buskers are a freewheeling bunch. They stay or go as they please. They bring music and colour to drab street corners. Naturally, a certain type of lawmaker frowns on them. New York banned busking from 1935 to 1970, and still curbs it in parks. Chicago forbids it in the better parts of town. This year St Louis quadrupled the fee for a street-performance permit. Buskers complained that they had to audition to get them. On behalf of two street musicians, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued.

The First Amendment protects buskers. Judges from Maryland to Hawaii have agreed that busking is a form of speech. In 2009 the ACLU convinced the 9th Circuit Court that permits were a form of censorship—who gave bureaucrats the power to decide what art was? Perhaps to avoid revisiting this debate, on October 4th St Louis began the process of repealing its permit rules. Buskers there may soon be free to tear up their cards.

Yet some buskers think a little light regulation might save them from something worse. Performers are often arrested or hassled by the police for nebulous offences like “causing a disturbance”. Those who can produce a permit are more likely to be spared. Stephen Baird, a busker since the 1970s, helped devise a fairly liberal permit scheme for Cambridge, Massachusetts. The city sets no limits and issues around 300 permits a year, for a small fee. Some of the money goes toward holding arts festivals, where buskers can expect to be hired to play a set or two. There, a cop might simply ask someone like Space Cowboy to show his licence and advise him to be careful while swallowing his weapons.